October 2021 - COVID-19 Resurgence Update
Well that escalated quickly...
TL;DR – Changes in the New Zealand government approach to the current COVID-19 resurgence in October 2021 have required that we make changes to our health and safety approach to protect our staff and our clients.
- Until further notice, client meetings will be online only
- IT changes that require on-site presence will default to after hours
- Emergency on-site support will be provided as required using PPE and following published health and safety protocols
Joel Macklow
Customer IT Strategist
We've been here before, kind-of...
I think its fair to say that we were all hoping beyond hope that we wouldn’t end up here. After a sterling effort on the part of the whole country at Alert Level 4, and an on-going herculean effort on the part of AKL at AL4 and now AL3 to eradicate the delta variant, to now be staring down the barrel of an acceptance that our future is moving to treating COVID as endemic and vaccinating to reduce the public and personal health risk, feels on many fronts to be a capitulation.
Last year, as this all kicked off we posted a management guide for NZ SMB outlining how people, process and technology could help us all to manage through the situation. The first priority we stated was caring for our people, our employees. We follow our own advice as an organisation, and that means that we have had to re-evaluate our approach in caring for our staff and our clients based on the recently published changed approach to delta announced by the government.
Where the risk lies
As a management team, we have been watching the case load across the motu, as so many of you have too.
Thanks to the great work of @farmgeek we can see the risk that unvaccinated people pose to the health system in coming months if the current case breakdown holds true.
Many of us are family people and are now deeply concerned about how our unvaccinated children under twelve will be at risk returning to school where they may come into contact with unvaccinated teachers or the infectious children of unvaccinated parents.
We have been watching the comments of highly respected @drjinrussell here and here regarding the risk for our children – the next generation of New Zealanders.
As an organisation, we encourage our staff to follow public health advice. We are pleased that our entire team have chosen to follow public health advice and are now fully vaccinated.
We are aware however, that there are some employees of our clients that have chosen not to be vaccinated at this time. While we don’t pass judgement on their decision and reasons, we need to evaluate the risks that they and we pose to each other and our families.
What this means
We want to protect the health and wellbeing of our:
- staff
- our staff families and children
- our clients
- our clients’ families and children
- our community
- our health system
In an effort to reduce the risk of infection from, and to, the above groups, we have evaluated what changes we can make in our processes in the coming months as we observe the health impacts and health system impacts of the governments changed approach.
As a result, we have made the following decisions:
- Until further notice, client meetings will be online only
- IT changes that require on-site presence will default to after hours
- Emergency on-site support will be provided as required using PPE and following published health and safety protocols
We continue to be committed to powering the growth of our valued clients and helping them to use the power of technology to navigate these rapidly changing times. We are confident that these decisions will enable us to continue to serve your business in a safe and secure manner in the months to come.